Page 23 of Slashed Bonds

And no gifts.

That one’s mine. Written into my file the day I signed, because a gift is a hook, and I’ve had enough hooks in me for one lifetime.

His palm slides up the front of my throat.

Not gripping. Resting. Warm and enormous and settled over the moth inked across my scar, and my whole body should reject that touch — should throw it off, should go feral, since anyone reaching for my neck without asking gets an elbow through their teeth on reflex.

He asked, once. Two and a half years ago.

And he’s never had to ask twice.

He kisses the side of my neck, unhurried, the way you’d handle something that mattered.

For a man the Underground apparently regards as vicious, he’s been nothing but tender with me. I’ve heard the stories. I’ve watched attendants change direction in a hallway rather than pass him.

He’s never been that with me. Not once.

“Always for you,” I tell him.

Answering him at all is a courtesy. He doesn’t chase it.

That’s the strangest thing about this. I’m not submissive here. We go rough when I want it rough, and he meets me there without needing to be talked into it, and then reads me well enough to stop before I ask.

I don’t push his boundaries. He’s never once tested mine.

We have safe words.

Safe words. For a thing that can’t be called a relationship, or even a situationship.

Both of those require knowing the person.

I don’t know his name.

He doesn’t know mine.

We’re two masked disasters trading exactly what we need — my body’s unscheduled riots, his rut, the whole ugly chemistry of it — and then we go back to our lives.

For all I know, he’s a CEO. A chef. Some rockstar with an NDA problem.

Inside these four walls, we’re masked lovers chasing the same high, and the anonymity is the entire point.

It’s also the only reason this works.

You can’t be rejected by a man whose face you’ve never seen.

We met by accident, which is the only way anything good has ever reached me.

Bad night. One of the worst of that year, and that year had a deep bench. My symptoms had been climbing since noon, the kind that start as heat under the sternum and end with your body making decisions without consulting you. I’d been dealing with everyone’s bullshit for eleven straight hours. A pharmacist who talked to me like I was fourteen. A caseworker who used the word noncompliant. Some Alpha in the parking lot who decided a masked Omega walking alone at night was an invitation and had to be persuaded otherwise.

By the time I got through the Underground’s intake, I was running on nothing.

Right moment. Right corner. Wrong century for me to be lucky.

The floor came up at me in the east corridor, and the walls did their tilting act, and I remember thinking with total calm that they’d find me on the carpet and put me out with the trash. Because that’s the reflex now. Not fear. Logistics.

Who removes the body.

Then somebody caught me.